Death of a Unicorn

Posted on March 26, 2025 at 12:30 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for strong violent content, gore, language and some drug use
Profanity:	Very strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Alcohol and drug use
Violence/ Scariness:	Extended and very gory peril and violence, many characters injured and killed, graphic and disturbing images
Diversity Issues:	Class and economic diversity themes
Date Released to Theaters:	March 28, 2025

Elliot (Paul Rudd), a nervous lawyer who is late to a very important meeting with a vastly wealthy client and constantly sneezing from his allergy to pollen. He is driving much too fast on a precarious mountain road and he hits…a unicorn. He and his daughter Ridley (Jenna Ortega) get out of the car. She touches the unicorn’s glowing horn and makes some kind of connection to the animal and its wisdom about the universe. He, seeing that the animal is suffering and again, frantic about getting to the compound on top of the mountain to meet with the client, hits the unicorn with a tire iron to, well, you saw the title.

They shove the unicorn’s body into the rental car and proceed up the mountain to the compound of the client, Odell (Richard E. Grant), critically ill and on oxygen, his wife Belinda (Tea Leoni) and their son, Shepard (Will Poulter). This visit will determine whether Odell will bring Elliot on as a partner of the pharmaceutical company, and Elliot has brought Ridley along to demonstrate his value as a family man. He does not pay attention to Ridley’s unhappiness with him and with the client as a representative of the oppressive oligarchy. She has grudgingly agreed to pretend to close to him. And he keeps assuring her that all of the compromises he is making are because he wants to take care of her.

This conflict is acutely shown in the first scene, when they are stuck on a plane that has been delayed. Ridley has fallen asleep on her father’s shoulder. He looks at her tenderly. But then the papers he was working on fall into the aisle, and, after some brief efforts to reach them without disturbing her, he stretches out and lets her head fall to the armrest with a thunk.

Odell, Belinda, and Shepard do not exemplify Ridley’s view of the oligarchy; they are even more selfish, fatuous, and predatory than she imagined. Grant and Leoni are right on point in conveying the superficial congeniality and underlying combination of carelessness and ruthlessness that comes from a complete disconnection to any adverse consequences. Why shouldn’t the entire world exist for no purpose other than their comfort and, perhaps, immortality?

Their reaction to the unicorn is to follow the Native American “every part of the buffalo” theory, not out of economy or respect but out of greed. This is amplified when an infusion of unicorn blood brings Odell back from the brink of death to vibrant health. It might even cure cancer. Poulter is also terrific as the spoiled bro heir.” That’s the biggest one!” Shepard shouts joyfully. There’s a recurring joke about the way the family yells “Griff” for the servant (Anthony Carrigan) any time one of them needs something, thinks they need something, or just has a whim.

The dead unicorn is a baby and the other unicorns want it back. Ridley does some research into the legend behind the famous unicorn tapestries now in New York’s Cloisters Museum. The connection she made when she touched the horn helps her understand that it will not go well for anyone who hurts or captures. The movie gets very grisly.

We are in the midst of a prevalent “eat the rich” theme in television series from “Squid Games” to “White Lotus” and “Severance” and movies like “The Menu,” “Triangle of Sadness,” and “Mickey 17.” Some of them are more effective than others. I’d put this somewhere in the middle. The extended bloodbath at the end and the slight nod at one character’s redemption are not as well-executed as the satiric first half. But its audacity and imagination are impressive and the skill and commitment of the cast makes it very watchable.

Parents should know that this movie has extended and very graphic violence with most characters injured or killed and very disturbing images. Characters use strong language.

Family discussion: Why was it hard for Elliot to see that he was not helping Ridley? What do you think will happen after the ending of the movie?

If you like this, try: “Glass Onion,” “Dumb Money,” and “Mickey 17”

Novocaine

Posted on March 13, 2025 at 5:53 pm

B-

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for strong bloody violence, grisly images, and language throughout
Profanity:	Constant very strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Alcohol, scene in a bar
Violence/ Scariness:	Constant peril and violence, many characters injured and killed, automatic weapons, injuries with ordinary but dangerous objects, graphic and disturbing wounds and other images
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	March 14, 2025

Pain has a purpose. It helps keep us safe. We avoid being hurt and we get help when we are hurt. But Nathan Caine (a game Jack Quaid) has a condition called congenital insensitivity to pain and anhydrosis. He can be injured, but the pain message never makes it to his brain. The only way his parents could keep him safe was to keep him away from anything that might injure him. There’s a tennis ball on the corner of his desk just in case it is sharp enough to hurt him if he bangs into it. The tips of the pencils on his desk are covered. Nate does not eat solid food because what if he bit his tongue? He would never know.

He has a risk-averse job. That tennis ball-adorned desk is in a quiet neighborhood bank, where Nate is an assistant manager. At the office, he is kind to a widower who has missed his loan payments, giving him an unauthorized extension. And he looks longingly at Sherry (Amber Midthunder) but has no idea of how to talk to her. At home, he plays online games with Roscoe a 6’5″ guy with a man-bun, I mean a mini high ponytail, who rides a Harley. They’ve never actually met in person, but that’s as close to an IRL relationship as Nate has.

It is just before Christmas, and the bank is preparing for a busy day with people depositing their bonus checks. Then three men come in, dressed as Santa, and start shooting. Things go badly. The manager is killed. Many police officers are killed. And Sherry is taken hostage.

Nate immediately switches from being the most careful person on earth to being the most reckless as he races to rescue Sherry and basically turns the movie into something between an old school video game and a Road Runner cartoon. That almost but not quite makes it possible not to be overwhelmed by the constant carnage, with the Dolby sound of the guns making the theater seats shake.

It’s just one scene after another of Nate going after the bad guys, the cops going after him, the bad guys going after him, at one point a booby-trapped house going after him. Screenwriter Lars Jacobson comes up with a very inventive series of ways to inflict injury, if not pain, on Nate, whether he is sticking his hand in boiling oil to retrieve a gun, removing a bullet from his arm and sewing up the wound, being slammed in the back with a giant shining spiked flail, and pulling out a big knife that went through his hand so he can use it on someone else. As they used to say in the Timex watch commercials, he takes a licking and keeps on ticking. None of it makes sense, even if he does stop for an adrenaline injection, but if we wanted to see something make sense we’d be at a different movie.

Hero Quaid and Ray Nicholson, who plays bad guy Simon, are both sons of Hollywood stars, and we can guess who their fathers are when they smile. Quaid is the son of Meg Ryan and Dennis Quaid, and he has his dad’s wickedly charming grin. Nicholson does not look much like his dad, Jack, until we see his smile. Midthunder is also from a show business family; her father is an actor and her mother is a casting director. She is also appearing in another movie opening this week, “Opus,” with John Malcovich. In her first lead role in a film, she is immensely appealing and gives her character more depth than we might expect, deftly rounding some character arcs that would be a challenge for many more experienced performers.

As we careen from fight to shoot-out to chase, it feels more like an FPS game than a story, but what little story there is gives Nate a chance to discover himself and his capabilities, including connections to Shelly and Roscoe. Quaid handles all of that more than capably. It’s not memorable, and there’s too much carnage for the spirited tone it strives for, but the actors make it work.

Parents should know that this film has non-stop very intense peril and violence with many characters injured and killed and many graphic and disturbing images. Characters use constant very strong language. Characters drink alcohol and there is a scene in a bar.

Family discussion: Why didn’t Nate tell the police how to find the robbers? Do you agree with what the judge decided?

If you like this, try: “Crank” and “Shoot ’em Up”

Opus

Posted on March 13, 2025 at 12:50 pm

B-

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for violent content including a grisly image, language, sexual material and brief graphic nudity
Profanity:	Very strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Alcohol
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	March 14, 2025

“Opus” is almost smart, almost good, and almost worth your time. A first-rate but mostly under-used cast flounders in the second half of a story that begins as a satire of obsession with celebrity that veers into a less successful thriller.

The first feature film from writer/director Mark Anthony Green stars John Malcovich as Alfred Moretti, a rock star who is a combination of Bob Dylan and Elvis Presley, not in style of music but in prominence and influence. Thirty years ago, he was the most popular musician in the world (every teenager of the era used his signature song as a ring tone, we learn). And then he burnished his legend by disappearing. Now, after decades of isolation, his long-time publicist (a very funny Tony Hale playing a character with the wonderfully name Soledad Yusef) informs the world that Moretti will release a new record and he is inviting a very small group to his compound to be the first to hear it.

They are Ariel Ecton (Ayo Edebiri), a frustrated young journalist working at a Rolling Stone-style magazine whose ideas are always given to more senior writers, her boss, Stan Sullivan (Murray Bartlett), television star Clara Armstrong (Juliette Lewis), estranged former Moretti colleague Bill Lotto (Mark Sivertsen), veteran photographer Bianca Tyson (Melissa Chambers), and “influencer” (I always have to put that term in quotes) Emily Katz (Stephanie Suganami). Other than Ariel, these characters have at most one attribute each, despite the best efforts of the excellent cast. Stan is starstruck and arrogant, telling Ariel to take notes and forbidding her to write even a subsidiary piece about the compound and its residents. The others barely have anything to do except taking for granted this exceptional opportunity and going along (as long as they can) with everything that happens because they want Moretti to keep including them. They keep telling the emperor that his clothes are fabulous. Maybe they’ve deluded themselves into thinking he is. Maybe they just want him to think they’re cool, an even bigger delusion.

Their phones and laptops are confiscated “to preserve the integrity” of the experience (so much for the “influencer.” And the residents of this remote compound are more than staff; they all seem to be part of a cult. At first, they seem to be a peaceful arts community. Then things get quirky. Then they get creepy. Then they get terrifying.

Like Moretti, this movie is not as smart as it thinks it is. It is better at raising thoughtful questions than illuminating them. By the end, it does not earn its provocation.

Parents should know that this movie has extended peril and violence with many graphic and very disturbing images. Many characters are injured and killed. Characters use strong language and drink alcohol.

Family discussion: Why do the visitors go along with some of the craziness? At what point would you decide to leave? Who does Moretti remind you of? What is the meaning of the final “thank you?”

Flight Risk

Posted on January 23, 2025 at 7:12 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for violence and language
Profanity:	Very strong and crude languagecdure
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Extended peril and violence, airplane peril, characters injured and killed, some grisly and disturbing images
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	January 24, 2025

“Flight Risk” has all of the ingredients for a tight little thriller except one. There’s a good set-up — transport of a cooperating witness, accompanied by just one US Marshal in her first return to field work after a failure that left her feeling vulnerable, and a pilot sent by the bad guys to kill the witness. It has a good setting — a small plane flying through the snowy mountains of Alaska. And a good run-time — just over 90 minutes. But the direction by Mel Gibson is sloppy. Not the editing or special effects, which range from serviceable to tense, but some of the choices that interfere with the best the movie has to offer.

Topher Grace, who plays Winston, is, as always, immediately engaging, well cast as the talkative prisoner. He’s first seen in a low-end motel, sitting on the bed and staring into an aged microwave waiting for it to warm up a styrofoam cup of soup. US Marshals break in and he immediately offers to cooperate with them. Like Charles Grodin in the infinitely better “Midnight Run,” Winston was an accountant for a vicious mob boss. He agrees to tell law enforcement everything he knows if they will give him immunity and protection.

Michelle Dockery (“Downton Abbey”) is Madolyn Harris. She has to bring Winston east to testify in the gangster’s trial. Without his testimony, there will not be enough evidence to convict him. She charters a plane, gets Winston settled with handcuffs, and takes the only other seat, next to the pilot (Mark Wahlberg), who says his name is Booth. His backwards baseball cap, chewing gum, and cornpone accent do not create a great deal of confidence, but he assures Madolyn that they’ll be in Anchorage and on their way to Seattle in 90 minutes.

Except he was never told their next stop was Seattle. Madolyn gets suspicious. “Booth” is there to kill Winston. He is also the only pilot on board. There is nothing around them but snowy mountains. The rest of the movie is the very bumpy ride.

The problem is that the fun of all the tension and action is interrupted by weird dialogue that is as off-balance as the plane. As Madolyn is using the limited access to her phone to update her colleagues (and try to figure out who has been leaking key information to the gangster), she is also on with Hassan (Maaz Ali), a pilot who is talking her through the instrumentation. He is creepily predatory, in the midst of the direst possible situation insisting that she go on a date with him. What is the idea behind this? Is there any world where someone might imagine this could be reassuring? It j’ust kept taking me out of the film.

And then there is “Booth.” Reportedly, Gibson let Wahlberg write some of his own dialogue, which gives his character a chance to free-associate a series of comments that he and Gibson may have considered evidence of recklessness and pleasure in hurting people, showing us why he is so dangerous. But they are crude and off-kilter (too many references to prison rape, for example) in a way that is at odds with the tempo and tone of the film. They’re also tedious. They do not add anything to the sense of menace or the stakes. It just comes across as self-indulgent, the last thing you want in a 90-minute thriller.

Parent should know that this is a very violent film with a knife, a flare gun, a very dangerous plane flight, criminal behavior and corruption, and extended strong language with very crude sexual references.

Family discussion: How did Madolyn decide who she could trust? How did her past experience help or hurt her ability to handle the challenges of this transport?

If you like this, try: “Plane,” “Fathom,” and “Con Air”

Kraven the Hunter

Posted on December 12, 2024 at 5:41 pm

B-

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for strong bloody violence and language
Profanity:	Some strong language, f-words
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Alcohol, potions
Violence/ Scariness:	Extended and graphic action and comic book style violence with disturbing and bloody images, knives, poison darts, bombs, fire, guns, bear traps, spears
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	December 13, 2024

Another day, another second or third-level Marvel character “from the Spider-Man universe” given main character energy as Sony makes sure it takes every possible advantage of the contractual carve-out that gives it a small piece of the Marvel universe that isn’t run by Kevin Feige and Disney. The best I can say is that “Kraven the Hunter” is a bit better than the dismal “Madame Web” and less goofy than Tom Hardy’s “Venom: The Last Dance.”

This is the sixth of the Sony films about ancillary Spider-Man characters, the longest (2 hours, 7 minutes), and the first to be rated R.

The rating is primarily for extended bloody violence, as indicated by the poster showing Kraven’s face with specks of blood (not his) and the sobriquet “Hunter.” In the comics, he hunts Spidey because he wants to test himself against the most challenging prey. That character is inspired by Richard Connell’s short story about hunting humans, “The Most Dangerous Game.” But this movie is an origin story, and Kraven hunts bad guys.

It opens in present day, where a bus is taking men in chains to a remote Russian prison. We see the man we will come to know as Kraven (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) holding his meager bedding as he enters his cell. An extremely tough-looking guy watches him enter, then says, “I do not like roommates.” Kraven tells him that he will be gone within three days; if not, his cellmate can hit him. Kraven stays long enough to kill another prisoner, one of those still-running-the-crime-syndicate-from-prison kingpins. And then he escapes, automatic weapon bullets all around him as he races to catch the plane that was sent for him.

Flashback to 16 years earlier. Teenage Sergei Kravinoff (Levi Miller) and his half-brother Dimitri (Billy Barrett) are attending a posh boarding school in upstate New York when they are told their father has come to pick them up. He is Nikolai Kravinoff (Russell Crowe), a powerful crime boss and the embodiment of toxic masculinity. He abruptly tells the boys that Sergei’s mother has committed suicide because she was “weak” and disturbed. There will be no funeral; instead he is taking his sons on a safari, so they can prove their manhood by killing dangerous animals.

Nikolai teaches his sons that the only things that matter are strength and power; they must never show weakness or fear. Sergei, who is brave and thoughtful, tries to protect his sensitive and vulnerable younger brother. When a legendary lion many hunters have failed to kill approaches them, Sergei puts himself in danger and is fatally mauled. But he is found by Calypso, a young girl on a photo safari with her parents. Her grandmother, a tarot card reader with some mystical power, had just given Calypso a vial with a potion that can “heal someone in undreamed ways.” She pours it into Sergei’s mouth and later, at the hospital, after he is pronounced dead he suddenly recovers. Between the potion and the lion’s blood that dripped into his wound, Sergei now has the powers of the world’s apex predators.

Yes, this is a superhero story about daddy issues. Nickolai is a narcissist who belittles everyone around him, including his sons and also some random guy named Aleksei Sytsevich (Alessandro Nivola) who tagged along on the safari in hopes of persuading Nickolai to allow him to be a part of all the criming. We will see him again later. When Nickolai tells Sergei he is taking him into the family business, Sergei runs away, leaving his brother behind.

Sergei becomes Kraven, living in a remote Russian forest on property once owned by his mother’s family. And he becomes a hunter, trying to balance his father’s ruthless brutality by taking out bad guys. He tracks down Calypso (Ariana DeBose), now an American lawyer working in London to thank her for saving his life and ask for her help in locating some bad guys. And then Dimitri is kidnapped, and Nickolai refuses to pay the ransom, because it will make him look weak.

All of this is just a light framework for a lot of impressive stunts. Kraven is old-school, so while people are shooting at him, he is using spears, knives, poison darts, and bear traps. At least the action scenes relieve us from the clunky dialogue and bad accents.

Parents should know that this is a very violent movie with constant action and comic-book-style chases and fight scenes and many graphic and disturbing images. A teenager gets mauled by a lion. There is a very unsympathetic discussion of suicide. Weapons include machine guns and rifles, spears, knives, poison darts, bear traps, and bombs. Characters drink alcohol and use some strong language.

Family discussion: Why did Sergei and Dimitri respond so differently to their father? What were Kraven’s strengths as a hunter? What mistakes did he make?

If you like this, try; “The Most Dangerous Game” and Taylor-Johnson’s “Bullet Train” and “Kick-Ass”